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Robert D. Blackwill is the U.S. Ambassador to India and a member of the Belfer Center''s Board of Directors. This is an excerpt from his article that appeared in the Times of India on March 12, 2002.
Before a joint session of Congress and in front of a global television audience numbering in the billions, George W. Bush praised the transformed relationship with India in his state of the union address. The president said that the U.S. is working with India "in ways we have never before, to achieve peace and prosperity."
President Bush''s words demonstrate the depth of his profound commitment boldly to redefine the U.S.-India bilateral relationship in order to bring these two great democracies into enduring strategic collaboration, based on common democratic values and overlapping vital and important national interests.
More than 50 American policy-makers at the assistant secretary level and above have visited India since I arrived at the end of July last year while many members of the prime minister''s senior national security team have traveled to the United States during the same time frame. Bilateral diplomatic exchanges with India are among the most frequent and intense that the United States conducts with any country in the world, allied or otherwise.
With the United States and India moving in unison to strangle the financial assets of terrorists, more than 112 nations have issued blocking orders and frozen assets used to finance terrorism. At the end of last year, India and the United States led the way in assisting the completion of the Bonn conference that established the interim government in Afghanistan. There is also the U.S.-India cyber terrorism initiative, which flows out of the November 9 summit in Washington. The U.S.-India defense policy group has also approved broad-based collaboration that includes military-to-military ties and a significant defense supply relationship.
This has been a remarkable success story regarding our bilateral relationship over the past year, led by Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Bush. We have made a great beginning. Our challenge is to maintain this extraordinary pace and substance in our bilateral ties, to continue to understand that the United States and India can truly be at home in the world, together.